


Misunderstand Me

by IronicSweetsUsername



Category: Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magika | Puella Magi Madoka Magica
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Dubious Morality, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Interspecies, Knotting, Kotatsu, Kyubey is Awful, Other, Oviposition, Rambling Thoughts of a Traumatized Youth, Self-Indulgent, Size Difference, Underage Sex, Weird Fluff, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2020-05-13
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:21:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24161239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronicSweetsUsername/pseuds/IronicSweetsUsername
Summary: Mami is new to being a magical girl. Set six months after making her wish, she is trying to adjust her priorities, wrestle with small personal failures, ascertain her identity, and finding answers in perhaps the worst place. The one thing she can talk to isn't a person, and may not have her best interests in mind. Of course, she might not, either.I felt like writing some gloomy flow of consciousness nonsense, so expect needlessly wordy repetition at times.Following chapters Will get weird and graphic and uncomfortable. Look forward to a tumble through addiction, discovery, and self sabotage! Added a couple tags as a 'Next time on Misunderstand Me,' and wow it's been a while since I've written long form. Enjoy?
Relationships: Tomoe Mami/Kyubey
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Misunderstand Me

It’s morning - Seven fifteen in the morning, on November nineteenth. There isn’t anything special about today. Six months have passed. Breath rolls into my chest and sits there, held for a moment before I send it on its way.

The exhale makes it easier to smile, and to make the small bow that comes after. For a small, peaceful moment the world goes dark. The small bend in my body sends little electric shuffles of hair across my face. They twinkle like stars in the darkness of sensation. Gone when my eyes open and I hear my own voice flow past my lips, as if by magic.

"Good morning, everyone. My name is Tomoe Mami," it started to say. "Thirteen years old. Bef- Up until and... Until now I'd been attending another school, which is obvious. I hope you'll deci- I hope you'll take care of me." Another bow. More darkness - This time with less stars to twinkle. Drowned by the failure of my stuttering… And by the silence. I can feel the weight of eyes on me, appraising me, trying to worm in and pry at my secrets before detaching. They leave me with the indifference that my lack of mystery deserves. There are no secrets to find. I’m understood at once, and discarded. When my eyes open this time, I see the soft smile melt into a glance of disappointed acceptance.

* * *

I'm looking in the mirror as per usual. The face staring back at me looks like it could blow over in the wind if you look at it from the right angle. Once again, it wasn't quite right. Not the way I remembered it. Even my hair is wrong, two tails instead of one at the side... A new attempt at identity. This might help, right? I kind of like how it looks... The girls at my last school who had this hair style always seemed mature.

Of course, I could remember it wrong. One more try. Three, two...

Darkness, tingles past my cheeks, and silence. When I straighten I can't muster the strength... Even though my lips part and tightness signals an attempt. Only a sigh comes out. Next year... If I work hard, I can do it next year. Trying to make myself go back so soon isn't healthy, anyway... There’s too much to manage. He was right. The next smile broke through the malaise before it set in. No sense whining about something I can't do anything about, right? Instead, I roll one of my shoulders, and turn on my heel - One step in front of the other as I leave the bathroom. The dread will hit with time, so I may as well evade it.

* * *

"Kyubey!"

Kyubey. The only being around who ever heard my voice - I imagined his head lifting in the sun, ear flicking, stretching lazily... Instead I’m surprised when he brushes past my ankle mid stride. "Oh! There you are - Did you come to watch me practice?" I ask him, crouching down to let my fingers glide into his fur, scratching at the curved jaw under his fur. The warmth takes me immediately, the softness... I can feel it lowering my blood pressure. Doldrum and shame leave my cheeks and carry the tension down away from my shoulders. They pool somewhere in my shadow as I pet Kyubey. The mere acknowledgement that I'm alive is enough. Somebody - Something else can see me. “Even though girls hate peeping Toms, you still had to watch, didn’t you?”

I'm here. I can still make jokes.

"Not particularly," comes the careless and adorable voice. So casual, endless in its disinterest. It can't be for affection, but he turns his face into my palm and buries in. Does he notice how often I need reassurance? I don't know what I'll do if he does.

Who am I kidding?

I'd seek it out more often, knowing where I can find it.

"You called, so here I am!"

Without meaning to, I'm laughing.

"I don't know how you do that," I say, scooping a hand around behind him and cradling him in my arms. "Were you helping another Puella Magi?" He shook his head, looking up at me - Rolled onto his back like a cat. The fluff of his stomach bunched up in little hills of softness, daring me to touch. Unlike cats, he didn't seem to mind the occasional rub. So... Of course it's where my hand goes. The move is instinctive and irresistible. He barely reacted in a human sense... Eyes open and watching me, tail drifting through the air as if unbound by gravity.

"I was focusing on you, Mami," he said, stopping me before I made it to the living room. Hadn't he said he wasn't listening?

"I don't get you."

"Do you have to?"

His head tips, waiting for an answer.

"I guess not."

On the horizon, the sun casts orange lines through the faint green haze of morning. Winter. Even though the snow only huddles in tiny, hard piles of ice, winter is here. Ice clings to the edges of the window, the air cold near the glass. In my arms, Kyubey is a furnace. He twists from the bottom to the top, paws finding their way to precise spots on my arm. In a moment he's on my shoulder... I turn to see what he sees, follow the pink infinity of his gaze out into the city... And see nothing.

"Any witches out there?"

"Of course," comes the reply, his tail giving a billow in the reflection. while dark thoughts bubble. Can he actually see that far? How many more can there be? I'm not the only one hunting them... And I've hunted a lot... But still he says ‘Of course’ while billowing his tail. Something about the way it moves reminds me of a person walking behind me. A pit drops in my stomach, darkness crawling back up from my shadow. No - Nothing like that is ever going to happen here again. "But none of them are close by. We'll have to travel again today." I nod. Again, he says... This was becoming routine.

Routine is a numbing salve, erasing the thoughts that come from the unexpected. It's a comfortable hideaway where time can disappear. I can avoid the weight of finding meaning for my life, distracted by aspects of the routine. I find pride in my ability, relief in saving others - All aspects of something that isn't me. Trying to find meaning in myself is hard. Trying to escape thoughts like these is harder... I shake my head and step away from the window, drawing the curtains. Routine, yes, but I'll approach it when I'm ready.

...When the gnawing guilt of knowing a witch is out there harming somebody grows too loud to ignore. For now, I'm pouting.

"Then I'll have to spend more time getting ready. You understand, right?" Of course, something as dense as Kyubey doesn't understand. That head tips, and he blinks. "That doesn't make sense, you're already dressed," he chastises. Sure, as long as my soul gem is with me I can fight a witch any time... But that isn’t what I mean. I don’t want to yet is all... I want to know that routine will be there even when I don’t deserve it.

* * *

Kyubey doesn't seem to mind the delay too much. He never does... Even though I'm here and even though something else is experiencing me, that thing is far away. Kyubey is adorable, but indifferent. He’s detached even in the way he scolds me.

“You’ll understand when you’re all grown up,” I say, my voice masked in a veneer of confidence that almost fools me... With an indifferent scratch under his chin. "Or are you all grown up, and this is the best you can do?" Kyubey shrugs that one off, rolling his head off of my fingers and brushing it against my wrist.

"Maturity doesn't have anything to do with it. You humans just don't seem to follow a logical mode of thought," he says... Words running together in my mind. "It creates a massive loss of opportunity and even results. We can’t understand why you’d choose to live this way, no matter how hard we try."

"Do you have to?" I ask sniping back at him. I'm pouting more and more now. It's for show, and I'm sure even Kyubey can tell. Pretending to be alive, to have depth, is better than disappearing... It keeps the sadness in my shadow where it belongs. Kyubey hops onto the kotatsu’s table when I finally reach it. My hand brushes past him and turns the dial, letting my legs adjust to the vacant chill under the blanket. It'll be warm before long. He looks at me with an air of disapproval that I'm sure I'm imagining.

"Yes! It would make it much easier to fight witches, wouldn't it? Everything would be easier, but your emotions insist on inconsistency," he says. "To an incubator, that would be like having a brain injury. We're very consistent." As he talks, I lower my head, chest tucked against the table's edge. I'm staring at the curtains now.

"I noticed that."

In my time with Kyubey, six months since the accident, we've had this conversation many times. The basic, fundamental incompatibility isn't something that I can ignore. Something like him should have a better bedside manner, but he can’t. He's a confusing creature, full of mystery... Whereas everything in me is already named. Everything is already categorized and understood despite my pretense. But what is he?

Contradictory and strange, where I'm only something sad. Sad things put on a strong face and complain as if they were happy. If a sad thing reaches out to someone... My head turns around to him, hands alternating in slow percussion on the table. Heat is finally starting to build near my knees. A neighbor in an apartment near mine opens something, and closes it soon after. Even with so many people close by, Kyubey is the only thing I’ll let near me. Everyone else somehow feels further away... As if they'd merely tolerate me, see me for the nothing that I am right now, and pretend to empathize... I don't want something fake like that, so I settle for something fake like this instead. I reach out to Kyubey as he lowers his own head to the table to rest. Smoothing over his fur, I flatten an ear and pat down his back. His tail rises in mock response.

At least I know he isn't choosing to ignore my existence. At least I can see that he experiences me by choice… I can see that he will never, ever understand me. I have depths he can’t fathom.

"It- What about this, though? Does it feel good?"

"Why do you ask?" he evades.

"Because every time I touch you, you lean in for more, you eat my food, and hog all the hot bath water... But you insist that you don't feel anything, how does that work?" My voice sounds almost annoyed, the pout clinging without me intending this time. Even now, after knowing better, I'm searching for a real response. "Don't you like being pet?"

"Do you want the scientific answer?"

"No, not, like… Not exactly... It doesn't feel good? Look - You're nuzzling!"

"It's possible that you're the one who enjoys this."

"You're still not answering..."

"Do you?"

I can tell he means that I enjoy doing this - And it's true. Even if I know he isn't doing this to be affectionate, that it's for my own sake... I can't help but answer like he's a person. Even staring into those eyes - Those endless wells of pink depth... Some part of my personality clings to life enough to make a joke. It was in spite of the unreachable pools behind his gaze, defiant of the chilling scale his stare implied. It has to be unfathomable, we have to have a lack of understanding - His responses have to be fake. If they weren’t, I’d be at risk of him understanding me… Of being small. I wouldn’t be able to play at grandeur anymore.

"I love being pet, thank you very much." To make a point, I withdraw my hand and turn away again, turning my attention to the heat of the kotatsu. It pales in comparison to the strange inferno from space. Even if he only says _I can consider_ him an alien, I'm sure that's what he is.

Only an alien could do something so strange in response to a joke.

* * *

A part of Kyubey touches my head. It must be his paw... I can feel his eyes pounding down on my head as the gentle touch descends. My hair compresses in layers, the touch silent. His touch glides down along the curve of my scalp. It's a slow movement - One that he watches and repeats with a consistency that must be alien. It's silent. With my eyes closed, it's a touch that carries an emotional weight I didn't expect. In my mind I question his name, wondering his intent... Wondering if he can hear that private attempt at speech that never comes. He's petting me...?

The pressure on my head brings the slight chill that a touch can bring... I'm not touching. It's somebody - It's something else. A living thing... Almost as if I'm not alone. It's enough to let me pretend. "I want to go to school." But I stutter. I have to fight witches.

Besides… There's no reply... At least his touch doesn't leave. My fingers wring the carpet.

"I want to talk to somebody. I want somebody to look at me." I want to be something worth looking at.

What would an alien say, already doing something so strange while I pour my heart out in quiet wavers of longing? I imagine Kyubey is already saying everything he can. The next touch brings the heat of pressure to my eyes, a familiar tightness in my throat. I have to fight today. My chest feels a rush in it, Kyubey's paw stepping in rhythm down my hair. The rush tightens, and I hiccup. The sniffle surprises me.

"Can you do this more often?"

I don't see his reply, or hear one. The next few moments are full of slow, weak tears... The depths of today's sadness aren’t enough for more. It's not even eight o'clock yet... There have to be more for later. In time, the reply does come.

His paw rests on my head, and his comes near. I know he doesn't need to get closer to whisper, and the voice in my mind is no quieter than normal... ...But his muzzle is near my ear. My stomach twists a little. It still _feels_ like a whisper when he finally does say something.

"Will you fight more witches if I do?"

The silence settles in before I nod under his touch.

* * *

He’s silent - And close. The weight and realization that I didn’t want to save people is suffocating. A hand on my head was all it took for me to realize. I want somebody to look at me, to yearn and always fail to see the whole of me. The way he looks at me... I can still hide that way - There's a refuge in his failure to understand. I'm not small yet.

...Even if it’s an illusion that the weight of his careless paw sets in my head. But how could it be an illusion?

After all, I didn’t notice myself breathing faster. It took until I saw the sun creeping under the curtains toward us. How long was I pinned under his paw and appraisal? When did my knees get so close together? Why do I have to catch my breath…? The arrhythmia in my chest isn't fake.

“Will you look at me when I do?”

This eases him away... But his paw remains. The weight of our lack of understanding is still there.

"As long as somebody looks at me, I'll fight witches," I mumble. "You'll look at me, right, Kyubey?"

He pets me in response. The heat of his paw, of the blanket, the kotatsu... It makes me shudder for a moment, and I sigh before he can answer. As long as I can tell myself I’m more than I really am... This is enough. Kyubey is enough. Fighting witches is enough. The shudder passes and my legs relax, Kyubey's paw leaves my head, and he hops onto the floor.

I'm losing my mind. I felt something bad right then.

Very bad.

**Author's Note:**

> First time posting on AO3, it labeled this work as complete but it definitely isn't. Whoops!


End file.
